The Philippine President Has Admitted to Using Social Media Trolls During His Campaign

Recently,
a study by Oxford University revealed that trolls, both in human and
bot form, were used extensively by Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte
and his team during the election campaign. Rather than shy away from
these allegations, Duterte had openly admitted that this is the case,
stating that he used them during the election, but no longer has any
need of them.

Transparency might not have been his
intention - ironically he seems to have been aiming more towards
self-preservation - but this admission is proof that political
candidates will resort to mass trolling if they think it's necessary. As
if we actually even needed proof of that. As far as Duterte is
concerned, he's president now, and no longer has any need to defend
himself from criticism online.

Bots are used heavily on Twitter and
other platforms to either amplify or muzzle particular ideas, but
increasingly, political parties have taken to using groups of actual
people to spread their messages and/or confront their critics. In either
case, it creates the illusion of an idea being popular, when in fact
it's just getting an engineered uptick in traffic.

We're living in a 'headline culture'
at present - the title of a news story is a lot more impactful than the
actual content a lot of the time, so all you really need to do to
create a stronger bias is get people (or bots) to keep sharing the same
link. Once an idea, even a misinterpreted one, takes off, there's little
anyone can do to stop it. The internet has a short attention span.

Studies have suggested that
Duterte's social media goons have continued to spread ideas beyond the
election victory, despite Duterte's denial of this. The very fact that
he was willing to admit not only to using a troll army during the
election, but how much his team spent on it (roughly $200,000), unearths
some sinister truths about the current political climate.